basketball Page 245 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Steve Kerr's Good NBA Draft Idea: Let Undrafted Players Return To Their Teams
Current NCAA regulations forbid any player who declares for the NBA draft and signs with an agent to return to his college team, even if he goes undrafted. It’s a particularly cruel facet of an already exploitative system, and a rule that’s explicitly designed to keep players within the bounds of th...

This Is How To Pay College Athletes<em></em>
For all that the ongoing FBI investigation into college basketball’s underground economy has and could yet reveal, nothing is more obvious and undeniable than this: The on-stage performers in a multimillion-dollar entertainment industry do, in fact, have value beyond athletic scholarships and small ...

Markelle Fultz Shooting Form Update: Shot Longer
The Sixers are almost certainly going to the playoffs, and the future looks bright for a team that was 10-72 just two seasons ago. They’ve also done this without the No. 1 overall pick whose shot is fundamentally borked....

Fuck The Possession Arrow
Before we begin, a brief CORRECTION. Last week I defended the practice of baseball teams fucking around in spring training and inviting the likes of Russell Wilson to take a few stunt at bats. In light of Chris Berman “managing” a game for the Giants this past weekend, I have changed my mind. Spring...

Kyle Anderson Hurled The Best, Goofiest Alley-Oop Of The Season
The Kawhi-less Spurs are running on fumes, and it took a 23-point explosion from Tony Parker—who hadn’t cleared the 20-point mark in more than two years—to propel them past the league-worst Grizzlies 100-98 last night. Pau Gasol also hurt his shoulder in the game, making matters no easier for Gregg ...

Now Is The Time For Larry Nance Jr. To Bounce Around And Make The Cavs Fun
Cleveland Cavaliers center Tristan Thompson will miss at least the next couple of weeks recovering from a sprained right ankle. In his place, the Cavs will start spring-loaded slam-dunk bear Larry Nance Jr., whom they acquired from the Los Angeles Lakers back at the trade deadline. He got his first ...

Perennial Quitter Tubby Smith Says NCAA Transfers "Teach Players How To Quit"
Memphis men’s basketball coach Tubby Smith, who quit his job at Texas Tech to take his current position in 2016, went off on NCAA transfer regulations following the last game of his regular season on Sunday, saying that relaxed transfer rules “teach (players) how to quit.” ...

The Spurs, Who Have No Good Players, Are Having A Hard Time
Really, the only disorienting part of it is the uniforms. A team lately composed mainly of weird misshapen basketball nobodies scrounged from the sport’s couch cushions—a team that on any given night gets but more importantly needs and maybe even cannot survive without meaningful contributions from ...

Penn Cut Down The Nets In An Empty Palestra At 2:15 Sunday Morning
PHILADELPHIA — A.J. Brodeur didn’t want to lie. Asked whether this was the first time he’d been in The Palestra after 2 a.m., he admitted it was....

John Beilein Is Pulling All The Right Strings And Michigan Looks Great
If there is anyone who still doubts that Michigan’s John Beilein is one of the best head coaches in the country, they should be shown a tape of Sunday’s Michigan-Purdue Big Ten title game. For the second day in a row, Beilein’s Wolverines faced an undeniably more talented opposition, and all they di...

Radford Earns Big South Conference Championship With Game-Winning Buzzer-Beater
I’m still digging the buzzer-beaters over here. This one comes from the Big South Conference tournament final, where 2nd-seed Radford had the last possession of a tied game against 5th-seed Liberty, who’d knocked out top-seed UNC Asheville on Friday. The Highlanders ran off some clock and set a pair...

Lonzo Ball Rescued The Lakers With Actual By-God Buckets
The Lakers, stuck in the somewhat rare position of being a definite non-playoff team that also has no incentive whatsoever to lose, have, instead, been winning: they’ve now won five in a row, and seven of ten, and nine of 12, and 13 of 18, and 17 of 24. Barring a downturn over their final 20 games—a...

Won't Someone Please Liquidate The Damn Detroit Pistons Already
It is with great indifference (because it is impossible to feel any particular way about these Detroit Pistons) that I must inform you, a person who will be vaguely surprised to be reminded that the Pistons are an NBA team—not so much because you forgot altogether that they are an NBA team but by th...

High School Title Game Ends With Insane Game-Winning Hail Mary Buzzer-Beater
The scene of this incredible buzzer beater is the gym at Pace University, where Ardsley High School found itself down two, 51-49, with just seconds left in the New York Section 1 Class A title game, and opponent Tappan Zee High School inbounding:...

Celtics-Rockets Was One Totally Bitchin' Basketball Game
If you missed last night’s Celtics-Rockets game—if, say, you were watching outdoor hockey or a heavyweight title fight—you missed an outrageously fun and fast and fiercely competitive game. You wouldn’t necessarily expect a game where James Harden and Kyrie Irving combined to shoot 12-of-35 from the...

Brad Stevens Says Gordon Hayward Will For Sure Not Play For The Celtics This Season
Gordon Hayward shared a video Friday of a workout that looked startlingly basketball-ish. This, you can imagine, has led to a fresh round of speculation about whether Hayward could return to the court this season, something that seemed absolutely impossible with his leg looking like a wet noodle on ...

Counterpoint: Actually Everyone Thought J.R. Smith's Latest Stunt Was Pretty Funny
Here is a funny headline to put above a blog about J.R. Smith just hours after the entire internet spent a full day enjoying the thought of Smith hurling soup at Cavs assistant coach Damon Jones: “With Cavs struggling, J.R. Smith’s stunts aren’t so funny anymore.” I beg to differ!...

Timberwolves Collectively Melt Down During Costly Conference Loss
In the fourth quarter of Friday night’s Jazz win over the Timberwolves, Jeff Teague tracked Ricky Rubio in transition up the left sideline and randomly checked him into the row of courtside seats. The penalty for Teague was a scolding from Jazz forward Jae Crowder, and a Flagrant 2 foul, and an ejec...

Arizona Loses Its Last 2018 Basketball Recruit
One day after Sean Miller defiantly denied ESPN’s report that he’d been caught on an FBI wiretap promising to pay a recruit $100,000, point guard Brandon Williams (24/7 Sports’s 31st-ranked national prospect) announced that he’s reopening his recruitment due to the “current climate surrounding U of ...

The Kings Are Terrible, But De'Aaron Fox Is Great At Hitting Buzzer-Beaters
The Sacramento Kings are 19-43, and there’s not much at stake over the last 20 games of the season, save for lottery ping pong balls. That’s how this season was always going to turn out, and after moving George Hill to Cleveland, the Kings can thrust rookie point guard De’Aaron Fox all the way into ...